The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c15.s1.7

v1.c15.s1.7

Then come the Greek and Roman historians of Alexander the Great, whose detailed accounts of the Indian campaign (327–325 B.C.) throw a flood of light on the political conditions of N.W. India, and carry our geographical knowledge eastwards beyond the Jhelum (Hydaspes), the eastern limit of Gandhāra, to the Beās (Hyphasis). This marks the extent of Alexander’s conquests. Far from securing the dominant position of Northern India, the country of the upper Jumna and Ganges, these conquests failed even to reach the country of the Sarasvatī, the centre of Indo-Aryan civilisation in the age of the Rigveda. Alexander was the conqueror of ‘India’ only in the sense that for a very few years he was master of ‘the country of the Indus.’ The confusion of this geographical term with its later meaning has been the cause of endless misconception all through the Middle Ages even down to the present day.